ITP Update 3/11/08

Sigh. Last Friday I noticed that there may be some cause for concern about my platelet count. I called the doctor and after a couple games of phone tag, it was decided that I needed to go into Legacy Salmon Creek Hospital and have a lab drawn. My platelet count came back at 17k, after being 52k just 2 days before. The Hematologist on call decided that I didn't need to be admitted that night, but that I would for sure need to go into the infusion center the following morning to have 60 grams of IVIG. A platelet count drawn that following morning came back at 9k. I spent my Saturday being infused with ivig. So fun! The only thing I can say about getting ivig at Southwest Washington infusion center is that a friend of mine from PBC is a nurse there and she takes good care of me!
I went in on Tuesday for my regular appointment and my count was 312k. Hooray! I had another dose of the AMG 531 and the schedule for that trial isn't interrupted at all by the ivig.
Over the course of the last couple weeks, I've noticed that I've been increasingly tired and lethargic. My hematologist had checked my iron, but didn't say anything about it, so I wasn't thinking that my iron levels might be low, I thought it was just a side-effect of the injections. Some iron was called in for me by another doctor, but I wasn't able to get it until Monday (Joel went and picked it up after work). All day Monday I was exhausted and by Monday night, to move at all was a huge chore to almost impossible. All of that to say that I started taking the iron pills on Monday night and I feel 200% better today. It's amazing. I asked the hematologist about it yesterday and she said their cut off for anemia is 36 and I was 35.1, technically anemic.